Biology is the key to human nature, and social scientists cannot
afford to ignore its rapidly tightening principles. But the social
sciences are potentially far richer in content. Eventually they will
absorb the relevant ideas of biology and go on to beggar them by comparison.

E. Wilson (1990:260)

Biosociology is an emerging paradigm seeking to understand human behavior
by integrating relevant insights from the natural sciences into traditional
sociological thinking. Biosociology is not a "biological"
perspective; it is a biosocial perspective that recognizes "the
continuous, mutual, and inseparable interaction between biology and
the social environment" ( Lancaster, Altmann, Rossi, & Sherrod,
1987:2). Biosociology posits no ultimate causes of human behavior; rather,
it seeks to understand how biological factors interact with other factors
to produce observed behavior. It does not seek to "reduce"
complex behavior to the level of biological processes in isolation from
environmental influences; it merely insists that such processes must
be recognized and included in any analysis of behavior and that such
an analysis be consistent with those processes.

Biosociology is not sociobiology. Sociobiology has a more ambitious
agenda, it concerns itself with the behavior of all animals, it has
a grand theory (evolutionary theory), and it seeks ultimate causes.
Sociobiological explanations are concerned with the ultimate "whys"
of a phenomenon in terms of evolved species traits, and biosociology
is concerned with the "hows" of a phenomenon in terms of less
distal and more proximate causes. Biosociology and sociobiology are
only alternative perspectives in the same sense that proximate and ultimate
explanations are alternative (but not competing) explanations. As the
grand unifying theory of all life sciences, evolutionary theory provides
explanations of ultimate causes and provides directions for the investigation
of proximate biosocial causes; and in this sense, it subsumes biosociology.
As Allan Mazur (who, as far as I can determine, coined the term biosociology)
explains, "Sociobiology promises to revolutionize the social sciences
at all levels, while biosociology seeks a quiet niche in positivist
microsociology" ( 1981:157).

Sociobiological thinking is useful in that it "grounds" a
phenomenon in a broad and general theory, but its very broadness and
generality make it less than satisfying to sociologists. 1 Sociologists
tend to be "problem" oriented and to conduct research designed
more to address and ameliorate social problems rather than to illuminate
some ultimate "truth" about human nature. Sociobiologists,
on the other hand, are more interested in universals in human nature
than differences, a fact that led one of its major proponents to write
that sociobiology may be "minimally relevant to social policy decisions"
( Symons, 1987:141). For instance, to say that men rape and kill because
lust and aggression are male mammalian traits selected in by evolutionary
pressures ( Thornhill & Thornhill, 1992) may well be true, but it
begs an awful lot of questions. Such behavior is the result of phylogenetic
characteristics all men share but few express in the normal course of
events. If a given man rapes or kills, the distal phylogenetic causes
are less useful to us in terms of understanding that behavior than are
proximate ontogenetic causes. We would like to know about the offender's
unique genotype, the functioning of his nervous system and its usual
state of arousal (neurohormonal activation), his developmental experiences,
the immediate activating stimuli, and how all these factors permutate
and interact.

REDUCTIONISM AND HOLISM IN SCIENCE

Physicist Percy Bridgman maintained that the first and most important
step in understanding any system--atomic particles, chemical compounds,
cells, individual organisms, societies--is to understand the elementary
units comprising the system. The ultimate problem in the social sciences
is similar to that of the physical sciences but is more complex.

The ultimate problem is the problem of understanding the functioning
of the elementary units of which the systems are built up. The elementary
units in the physical sciences are particles. There are only a few kinds
of them. It took us a long time to find some of the laws and we haven't
got the laws of some of the particles yet. The elementary units of the
social sciences are men and the corresponding ultimate problem is to
understand the individual human being. ( Bridgman, 1955:49-50)

This is not to deny that social phenomena can be explained on their
own terms, or that lower-level "elementary units" explanations
are necessarily superior to holistic ones. Rather, it is to say that
complex social phenomena can be more fully understood if their explanations
maintain consistency with what we know about the more elementary units--the
biology and psychology of the actors in the social drama. Cosmides,
Tooby, and Barkow ( 1992:4) refer to this principle of conceptual consistency
as vertical integration, explaining that this term refers "to the
principle that the various disciplines within the behavioral and social
sciences should make themselves mutually consistent, and consistent
with what is known in the natural sciences as well." As reasonable
as this seems, many sociologists might see it as a call for reductionism,
against which there has been a long history of opposition.

When scientists write about the methodologies employed in their disciplines,
they typically refer to hierarchically arranged "levels of analysis."
These levels serve to organize knowledge within a field of inquiry along
manageable lines, albeit artificially discrete ones. The term reductionism
is often used disparagingly to mean that an inappropriate (lower) unit
of analysis has been used to explore, describe, or explain a particular
research question. Examining the phenomenon of crime, for instance,
one level of analysis might be "society." We could ask questions
like "Why is society A more criminogenic than society B?"
or "Why is society X more criminogenic today than it was Y years
ago?" To ask such questions is to seek a reply from the sociologist
(or other social scientist) because it is couched in broad "macro"
terms. It is asking for an explanation of the difference in crime rates
between two different societies or between the same society at two different
times. Being so couched, we need to look for cultural factors that differentiate
the two societies or time periods in such a way as to provide a satisfactory
explanation for differences in crime rates. A psychologist may also
attempt to answer the question using the vocabulary of psychology to
indicate that society A produces a different kind of mind-set as it
relates to conformity or nonconformity than society B. In doing so,
the psychologist has "reduced" the explanation of a question
couched in terms of one unit of analysis (whole societies) to a lower
unit of analysis (individual mind-sets). A sociologist may consider
this inappropriate; the psychologist would beg to differ.

The sociologist need not use the vocabulary of psychology to answer
the question as posed, for it does not inquire about "mind-sets."
But the psychologist must necessarily use the vocabulary of the sociologist
because he or she must delineate the nature of the social milieu producing
the mind-sets so that the question and its answer maintain consistency;
that is, the psychological explanation of the phenomenon requires the
use not only of psychological terms but also of specifically sociological,
political, economic, and historical terms that do not typically appear
in psychology's vocabulary. However, in finding that the culture of
society A produces individuals who tend more than individuals in society
B to be competitive, aggressive, or hedonistic, for example, and that
those possessing such traits tend to be more criminal than those who
do not, the psychologist has added a useful dimension to sociological
explanation. He or she has not detracted from the sociologist's explanation
as long as the cultural conditions associated with the development of
the enumerated character traits are acknowledged.

Unlike the psychologist, however, a biologist or chemist could not
reply to the question if limited to the vocabulary of biology and chemistry.
There are biochemical explanations for why some people are more competitive,
aggressive, or hedonistic than others, thereby reducing psychological
units of analysis (individual human beings) to biochemical units of
analysis (the molecular goings-on within those individuals). But any
such biochemical explanation for individual differences says nothing
about why such traits apparently translate into criminal behavior more
in society A than society B nor why it is that one can be competitive,
aggressive, and hedonistic and be perfectly law abiding.

Crime rates are emergent properties of sociocultural systems that cannot
be deduced from molecular analysis of individuals within them. To assert
that they can, a biochemist would have to show that properties of the
whole (society) can be deduced from biochemical properties of its constituent
parts (individuals) and would have to show that these properties differ
between societies A and B. In other words, the biochemist must possess
a suitable theory making it possible to analyze the form and nature
of the whole as having been derived from the properties of biochemical
units of analysis. No such theory exists. Thus, the phenomenon which
is to be explained (crime rates) can be adequately explained sociologically,
adequately explained psychologically given the proviso that sociocultural
variables are acknowledged, and not explained at all by biochemistry.
The line separating sociology and psychology is fuzzy with regard to
this question, but the line separating sociology and biochemistry is
clear and sharp.

Because discipline lines are sharp with regard to some questions, it
does not mean that cross-disciplinary lines of communication are closed
with regard to other questions. Biosociology believes that the social
and behavioral sciences are continuous with biology in the same way
that biology is continuous with chemistry and chemistry with physics.
Others like to draw sharp lines and erect high fences between "their"
science and its neighbors regardless of the form in which a particular
research question is posed. The drawers of sharp lines invoke the notion
of emergence or holism--the notion that wholes constitute higher levels
of organization, the properties of which are not considered predictable
from properties found at lower levels of organization. It is undeniable
that there are many emergent phenomena possessing properties which are
far more complex than the sum of their parts, but what constitutes a
"whole" depends on the discipline -one science's holism is
another's reductionism. The issue of whether principles relating to
one discipline are reducible to the principles of another is entirely
an empirical one. To decide the issue on any other basis is to dishonor
the spirit of science.

At one time or another in the history of science, representatives of
each science on August Comte's "hierarchy of science" ladder,
conscious of the emergent nature of the phenomena they study, have attempted
to disassociation.

Anthony Walsh is currently Professor of Criminal Justice at Boise State
University in Idaho. His research interests include any social-psychological
topic that can be informed by biological concepts, particularly IQ and
crime. Walsh is the author or coauthor of nine other books and more
than sixty journal articles or essays.